Archive for October, 2009

I know this is later than usual, but I will try to remember everything that I can. 🙂

Well we left on Wednesday last week and, for the first time, travelled by ferry. I will certainly surprised at how nice the ferry was. There was a Four Seasons, cinema, casino, liqour store, and multiple other things. We had gotten on the boat two hours before we were supposed to leave so we decided to look around and find our room. We got to our room and I was surprised by it also. We had four beds and our own bathroom. After that we decided to go and look around and get some supper. The boat took both pounds and euros so I just decided to exchange my money at the time. I was happy that my amount of money increased when it was exchanged to euros. After looking around we went and decided to eat at the buffet in the Four Seasons. Here is a list of everything that I ate (that I can remember): spaghetti, mashed potatos, dinner roll, roast beef, fish, green beans, baked potatos, zucchini & mushrooms, yorkshire pudding (tasted like chlorine, I did not like it), salad, grapes, cheese, a fruit tart, blueberry cheesecake, a water, and a hot chocolate. We all ate for about an hour and a half straight. I would have to say that was the most food I have ever eaten at one time. Now almost all of the food was amamzing…the cheese was not. Cody thought that we all needed to try this cheese that was moldy (it was supposed to be). Emily smelled it and said, “this smells like cow poop!” And..it did. So we all tried it and guess what….it tasted like cow poop. I about threw up, along with the other three. It was one of the worst things ever! And of course the taste would not leave my mouth for a while. After our meal we just hung out and eventually fell asleep. I found out that I dont sleep well on boats. 🙂

We arrived in Zeebrugge,Belgium Thursday morning, caught a coach (a Mercedes-Benz coach at that) to Brugge, and went to the bus station. Our encounter with the bus driver was not pleasent. We didn’t know what we were doing, so we told him the hostel we were trying to find…and to be nice about it, he was a jerk! Luckily there was a nice guy on the bus who told us which stop we had to get off at and where the hostel was. We got to our hostel, the Art Hostel, put our stuff in our room and figured out what sites we wanted to see for the next 3 days, and then we went to find some place to eat. We walked and found a bistro to eat at. Everything was pretty expensive and the food wasn’t all that great (i got spaghetti). From there we walked to the city center, which was about a 20 min walk from our hostel. We walked around and went to the Friet (fry) Museum (fries were invented in Belgium) and went in about every chocolate store we saw. There were prolly like a million. I bought a box of chocolate for myself at the chocolate store across from our hostel. I got 350 grams and I think so far I have eaten 2 pieces. I must say I am pretty chocolated out. I still haven’t eaten another piece and it’s been about a week.

Friday we walked back to the city center and we finally got to eat some waffles!! I was so excited because I love waffles. I ordered the fresh fruit and whipped cream waffles, they were DELICIOUS. The waffle was crispy and perfect. Emily had also found that you can order waffles with choclate and ice cream on them (she got that kind the two times we had waffles). That was probably the highlight of my trip. We went to the choco-story museum, went and saw “The Madonna, ate supper at pizza hut,went to a candy shop where they made hard candies (which are delicious), and walked around some more.

Saturday we got up and went to eat waffles again. I was more disappointed this time because I was looking forward to having strawberry and whipped cream waffles, but I couldn’t because they were out of season. So I instead got a waffle with butter and powdered sugar. Still good…but I was looking forward to strawberries :). We didn’t really have anything else to do this day except go to the bus station to get back to Zeebrugge to get on the ferry. So we walked to the bus station and sat there for several hours until our bus came, got back to the ferry, and went back to Hull. We also finally got our first stamp (besides England) in our passport. 😀

Last Thursday-Sunday we made our way to Pembroke, Wales on an 11 hours bus ride. Trust me, it’s something you never want to do. We were all very happy when we were finally able to get off of the bus. On Thursday we arrived at Pembroke at around 8:30 pm and walked down main street to find the Beech House Bed and Breakfast. I must say, it has been the best place we have stayed thus far. Ann, the owner, was a very nice lady who helped us out whenever she could. We got there and none of us had eaten supper so we were hoping to find a place to go and eat. The one major downfall of Pembroke was that there was no good place to eat the majority of the day. The kitchen was not open in most places so we would have to go and eat at fast food joints. Our first night we went and ate at a pizza, burger, kebab, and chicken place. It was pretty shady but the only place that was open at the time. The food wasn’t great either. At least we got something to eat. We then went back to the B&B and eventually went to sleep. The bed I slept it was prolly the most comfortable bed I have ever been in, I wanted to take it home with me.

On Friday it was just Cody, Emily, and me because Mouse was going to be coming later that night. We got up and went down to breakfast at 8:30. I walked in and there was cereal and fruit sitting there, and this is usually what we have been getting when we go and stay at hostels. Come to find out, these are just starters…so I have already eaten a bowl of cereal and a banana. Ann then comes in and brings in the tea and coffee and asks if everyone is ok with bacon and eggs…of course we are. She comes back a little while later with a plate full of bacon, eggs, sausage, tomato, mushrooms, baked beans, and toast. For someone who doesn’t eat breakfast, I am very proud of myself for being the only one who ate everything. 🙂 Go me. After that meal we were all very full and decided to go and site see. We started off walking down main street and went into various shops to see what they had and maybe pick up some souveniers. We then went down to the Pembroke Castle and looked around. This castle varied greatly from the Edinburgh castle. This one was an oval castle so the whole inside was wide open and you walked around the outside. You also didn’t have a tour guide so you could walk around and do whatever. We spent around 3 hours just walking around and taking picutres. It was like a jungle gym for big kids, it was great. Once we were done with that we continued to walk around and by 3 in the afternoon we decided we might get some lunch. Again, there was no kitchen open serving lunch, so we had to eat at a fish and chips place that apparently had award winning food….WRONG. I got a chicken and mushroom pot pie and chips (fries). The pot pie was alright but my fries were not very warm and they were so soggy that when you picked them up they fell apart. I was very disappointed. At this point in are all getting a little frustrated with the food options, so we just decide to go back and relax at the B&B for a while. We sat in the sitting room and watched TV, which we don’t get to do at Hull or in most places really because you have to have a license to have a TV. Once supper time rolled around we went and found someplace to eat that we already knew would be opening at 7. It was probably the best food I’d had eating out while in Pembroke. I got grilled scallops in a citrus and chive butter. They were amazing! I could have eaten those the whole time I was there. After we ate there, we went to the supermarket and got some goodies and went back to the B&B. Cody and I decided to play some pool…we played three games…and I lost all of them. 😦 It was a good time though.

On Saturday we decided to go on a Costal Walk. Cody had looked into it and it didn’t sound like a bad idea. Ann had told us of some places to go so we took her advice. We hoped on the Costal Cruiser (a bus/van) that took us to West Angle Bay. We spent quite a bit of time climbing on the rocks, looking for seashells, and taking pictures. Ann had suggested that we go to Fresh Water West, so we thought we’d go there. We had stopped to get something to drink and some ice cream before we left, but then realized that it was a 5.5 mile walk and we had around 2 hours to get there to catch the bus back to Pembroke so we started off. At first, it wasn’t so bad…but then it started to go downhill. There were these hills that I swear we were climbing mountains. It was pretty much straight up and straight down. There were like 11 hills like this. My heels were blistered and bleeding, I was hot, I pricked my hand on a bush or something and it swelled up, but hey at least it was a pretty view…even though I spent the majority of the 2 hours looking the ground so I didnt step in a hole. (Which I ended up doing a lot anyway). By the time we actually got to Fresh Water West, our bus has just gotten there so we didn’t even get to enjoy it. The up side..we got to see about 7 miles of the Wales Coast, also it was my first timem seeing the ocean. So it wasn’t all bad. After that all I wanted to do was shower. So we went back to the B&B and got cleaned up, had some tea, and relaxed until we decided to go and get some supper. Of course this was a pain again. We went and talked to pubs all over and apparently they don’t like to have food on Saturday nights. So we finally found a chinese and english restaurant and ate there. The chinese that I had was good, but I think Cody was a little disappointed in his food. He had ordered a burger, and that’s what he got….without a bun. We couldn’t help but laugh with all the bad luck we’d been having with food. We got done eating and went back to the B&B and just relaxed the rest of the night.

Sunday we left Pembroke at 7 am and got back to Hull around 6 pm. It was a long day. Overall the trip was fun, and it was a beautiful place.

If you want to look at my pictures I created a shutterfly page, it is caitlinstravels.shutterfly.com

So they say that in Scotland you experience 4 seasons in one day…I must say that this is a true statement. While we walked around it would go from being sunny and comfortable to cloudy and windy, to cold and rainy, and then back to sunny again. It was a little annoying, but you get used to it.

Well let’s go through an overview of my Scotland weekend:

Thursday: We left from the bus station Thursday morning and started on our 7 hr and 30 min bus ride. The first four hours I spend sleeping, which was nice. By the time I woke up we had to take an hour break in New Castle so the bus could fill up with gas and what not. It was the dinkiest bus station and you had to pay to use the bathroom (which is kind of common around here). The hour seemed to drag on but we finally got to get back on the bus and we arrived in Edinburgh at about 4:30pm. It is much nicer getting to where we are going in the afternoon. We then got a taxi that took us to our hostel. None of us had really eaten all day, I had had a doughnut and a bag of chips. So once we put our belongings in our hostel room we went to find some place to eat. We ventured down the street and found a restaurant called Sizziling Scotts. We went in and ordered. Cody got a started of Haggis, which we all tried before we exactly knew what it was. It actually didn’t taste too bad at all. I will tell you what is in Haggis, but I warn you, it is disgusting. Haggis has sheep stomach sac, heart, lungs, liver, and kidney fat. Yuummmmmmm…I seriously never want to eat it again. Well I had ordered an 8 oz steak that came with grilled tomato, mushrooms, onion rings, and mashed potatoes with cheese and chives. Now this sounds delicious right? Well the steak was the worst steak I have ever had…it tasted like I straight up ate a piece of charcol. Nasty. I was not a happy camper after that. I forced myself to eat it all though because I paid quite a bit for it. After we got done eating we went back to our hostel and we all went to sleep around 9…until the fire alarm went off at 11:45 because someone in the kitchen burned something. That wasn’t exactly a great wake-up call. So that was our Thursday.

Friday: So we got up Friday morning and set off to go on the tour of Edinburgh Castle. (Note: After we took our taxi to the Hostel the first night we walked absolutely everywhere we went in Edinburgh, and everywhere in St Andrews except the ride from the train station to our hostel.) We started walking in Edinburgh and saw some pretty churches, parks, and just buildings in general. We made our way up to the castle, which included walking up some crazy steep hills! For one, the castle didn’t look like what I imagine a castle looking like, but it was still beautiful. We took our tour and learned some history of the castle. After our tour we went into certain buildings like the great hall, the Queen Anne building, we saw the Scotland crown jewels, and royal apartments. (I don’t have pictures of the castle b/c my camera died that morning, so Cody has all the pictures.) We looked around and we also went and looked in the gift shops. I bought Cody his Xmas present…and I already gave it to him. (it’s a good thing cause he said he was gonna buy something like it.) So in return he bought me a pair of cashmere gloves, these came in handy because my hands were freezing a lot of the time. Besides looking at the castle, we also went on a Murder and Mayhem tour. We met outside the castle by a retaurant called the Witchery. This tour was meant to show you the darker side of Edinburgh but they did it with humor. It was a great experience. I thought it was going to be scary at first, but it ended up just being funny and very imformative. That’s what we did on Friday, in a nutshell.

Saturday: Saturday we caught a train to go to St Andrews. It was only about an hour train ride. Once we got there, we got a taxi and went to our hostel. We again, didn’t stay there very long and went and walked around. St Andrews is a very beautiful town, I like it because it’s a small and yet there are things to see and do. We walked and went and saw the Cathedral ruins, went and walked on the beach, saw the Castle ruins, and then made our way to St Andrews golf course. All of it was very nice, although St Andrews isn’t was pretty as I thought it was going be. I guess it’s just the history that is important. After walking around for a bit and going in the gift shops we went back to the hostel and I took a nice nap. 🙂 After that we went back out and and went to a bar/restaurnt (I dont remember what it’s called) and I guess is famous because of St Andrews. They had pictures of golfers all over the place. I also had the most amazing piece of apple pie there. It has like a strussel top and then a layer of carmel, and it was warm, and had ice cream on it. I would seriously go back just so I could have another piece of pie. Yumm Yumm. After we ate, the three of us went and climbed on some rocks and looked out at the water. It was beautiful.

Sunday: Sunday we got up at 6:45 (boooo) and went back to the St Andrews course and walked the 18-holes and took some pictures. That was the last of our Scotland trip. The rest of Sunday was spent riding back to Hull. We finally got back around 8 pm, and we were all thankful. It was a very good trip but tiring. My legs were super sore from walking everywhere so it was nice to relax.

This upcoming weekend we are going to Wales. I will blog and let you know how that trip goes.

Our first vacation of the trip was to Liverpool. We left last Friday and took a 2 hour bus ride to Leeds and then caught another bus that took us about 3 hours to Liverpool. We are starting to become fairly familiar with the bus systems. Once we got to Liverpool we caught a taxi to take us to our very first hostel. We were lucky, the taxi driver was very nice and told us about some places to go, he usually gives city tours. I was a little nervous about staying in a hostel, but all turned out to be okay. We got in our room. It was a tiny room with two sets of bunk-beds and a sink. It was nice for all of us to stay in the same room. Once we got there, we just relaxed. I tried to go to sleep at 9:30 but actually didn’t get to sleep until around midnight.

The next morning we got up, got ready, had breakfast, and started out on our journey through Liverpool. We started out just walking down the street to take pictures of an old church and then walked to the Anglican Cathedral, which oddly enough was designed by a Catholic. There is also a Catholic Cathedral in town, that was designed by an Anglican. Once we took pictures of the Anglican Cathedral we walked down by the water to try and find the Fab 4 Beatles store. It was very windy on this day and once we got to the water is was about 10 times worse. The nasty brown water was blowing up on us and it was so windy that we couldn’t walk in a straight line. At times I thought I was going to get blown away. To give you an idea of how chilly it was, we were walking down the sidewalk and the pigeons had their heads bent down so it looked like they had no neck because they were cold too. It was funny. We finally got to Albert’s Dock which had several shops, museums, and restaurants. We looked around and went in some shops to get souveniers and went through a few museums. We went through the Merritime museum, Seized! Mueseum, International Slavery Museum, and the Titanic Museum. We went and got some lunch at a restaurant called What’s Cookin?, it was pretty good but fairly expensive. I had the steak wrap, a side salad, and baked potatoes. I have come to realize that they put corn in/on a lot of things, things that I wouldn’t think of, like on pizza.

After we ate we decided to find our hostel. We started to think that it was strange when the taxi drivers had never heard of this hostel. We finally stopped in a hotel and they called a taxi for us. When we got there we drove up to these townhouses and there was a gate that said that the Old Dairy Hostel was in the back entrance. That kinda creeped some of us out, but we went in this back alley and walked up to this door but it was locked. So we kinda walked back and noticed some barbed wire on the fence. (This may sound really creepy, but it was kind of common is areas around here. Just around random things, the fenses will have barbed-wire on the top) We went inside and it turned out to be a very nice place. We had booked two rooms and each room had a double bed and a twin bed, a tv, stuff to make tea, a sink. I personally like it better than the first place. The rest of the day we spent relaxing and actually got to watch tv for the first time in 2 weeks, since you have to have a license here to have a television. The hostel itself was fine, but there were a group of Columbians staying there also and they were SO LOUD! They had been talking very loudly and laughing and acting like idiots for a while in the afternoon, but then at 2 in the morning they came home and did the exact same thing and woke me up. Then again, some time after that in the morning, they were loud and woke me up AGAIN! They made me so angry…I am just very happy I don’t have to deal with them anymore.

We left Liverpool on Sunday and made our way back to Hull and have no finally started classes. I had my first set of classes today. Today at 12:15 I had my Religion in Antiquity class, my professor is from Texas so I don’t have to worry about understanding his accent. The class was fine, I am hoping it gets better as the classes go on, but I only have 8 lectures left. 🙂 Yay! I also had my first class for Environment and Development in Africa, I also think this class will go better as I have more classes once we start learning about the different groups of people. I guess time will only tell. I have my art class tomorrow afternoon and then my Africa class again on Wednesday. Class definetely made my day go by really fast today. I got up, got ready, went to my classes and by the time they were done it was 4:15. Now I have to go do some laundry and possibly eat some supper.